Male employment highest in Surat, lowest in Patna

New Delhi, Apr 1 (UNI) Surat and Patna are two extremes: one provides maximum employment opportunities, the other the least.

About 88 per cent of the male population in Surat was employed between 1999-2000 and 2004-05, while Patna provided employment to only 53 per cent of its male population during the same period, according to a Report by the National Sample Survey Organisation.

For females, the worker population ratio (WPR) was highest in Varanasi (41 per cent) and lowest in Patna (2 per cent).

For class I cities as a whole, the WPR was 76 per cent, which was similar for class 2 towns as well, while for class 3 towns it was 78 per cent.

However, for females in the same age group, WPR was 20 per cent for class 1 cities, 22 per cent for class 2 towns and 28 per cent for class 3 towns.

Between 1999-2000 and 2004-2005, in class 1 cities as a whole, the unemployment rate in the usual status declined by 2 percentage points for both males and females: from 5 per cent to 3 per cent for males and from 6 per cent to 4 per cent for females.

The proportion of usually employed males to total male population increased by 1 percentage point for class 1 cities as well as size class 2 and 3 towns during the period.

However, for females, the increase was 2 percentage points in class 1 cities and 4 percentage points for both the size class 2 and 3 towns.

In majority of the class 1 cities, the proportion of regular wage and salaried employees was higher than that of self-employed people or casual labourers.

However, for size class 2 and 3 towns, the proportion of self-employed people was higher than that of regular wage or salaried or casual labourers.

The Report, Employment and Unemployment Situation in Cities and Towns in India, 2004-2005, is based on data of the NSS 61st round.

All states and union territories were covered by the survey except some interior areas of Nagaland, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and Ladakh and Kargil districts of Jammu and Kashmir.

The survey was spread over a sample of 7,999 villages and 4,602 urban blocks covering 1,24,680 sample households (79,306 in the rural areas and 45,374 in the urban areas).

The 4,602 urban blocks surveyed covered 143,643 people in the age group of 15 years and above in the sample households (males: 73,336 and females: 70,307).

The distribution across class 1 cities, size class 2 towns and size class 3 towns among those surveyed was 21,841; 67,324 and 54,478, respectively.

UNI